“I tend to think of the act of photographing—generally speaking—as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”

― Diane Arbus

Hello! I’m Ashlee—writer, photographer, and ultimate hype girl for all things motherhood & creativity. When I’m not writing or vacuuming Cheerios out of the carpet, I love making friends on the Internet, eating cereal for dinner, and rearranging bookshelves. By day, I run Coffee + Crumbs, an online literary magazine for mothers.

My approach to photography is simple: I want to help you remember your life. I'm a storyteller by nature, and photography allows me to tell your story, a gift I do not take lightly. My favorite sessions are the ones where we open the windows and make a mess and jump on the bed and lick cookie dough off the spoon. 

I don’t shoot weddings, but if you're planning a destination wedding in Fiji for around 50 people, I will definitely consider that and probably do it for cheap because I've always wanted to go to Fiji.

Why Film?

I started at the beginning with Google and YouTube and a used camera I bought off Ebay. I kid you not: it took me thirty minutes to figure out how to load film in the camera.

Unlike digital photography, which is quick and efficient, film is both painfully slow and wildly obscure. You cannot course correct if your settings are wrong, because you don’t actually know your settings are wrong until you get the pictures back. 

At the same time, film offers wonder and mystery, enchantment and grit. Film beckons me to slow down, to wait for the light, to wait for the moment, wait, wait, wait. Film is teaching me the beauty of delayed gratification, a long-lost virtue in our instant-everything world.

In 2023, I began incorporating film into my sessions out of a desire to fight for slow art. You can read more about that process here.